


Class Traitors

by OverconfidentFanficWriter



Series: Kingdom of The Dead [3]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Post-Apocalypse, including child corpses, mad max flurry road rides again, not too graphic on either but just in case, think i'm gonna wait for CRWBY to give me rebel!marrow content? think again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22439263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverconfidentFanficWriter/pseuds/OverconfidentFanficWriter
Summary: Another routine supply run after the Fall of Atlas turns sour when May and Marrow find a bar still full of bodies. Passing a bottle between them, they discuss their pasts and how they got here.
Relationships: Marrow Amin/May Marigold
Series: Kingdom of The Dead [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1633933
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	Class Traitors

It was always the small things that set May off. An undercooked pot of soup. Someone forgetting watch. A racist asshole starting trouble. One would think that with the enormity of their situation, these things would be mere pinpricks, but lately, they seemed to be the straws breaking May’s back.

Marrow Amin was far more than a pinprick. And right now, she was stuck with him on an evening search for Dust, because some twinge of genetics gave him the nose of a dog rather than night vision, and because his usual partner for this, Fiona, had overextended her Semblance today. May had naturally volunteered to take up her hunt so she could get the full night's sleep needed to recuperate, so concerned with Fiona's state that she didn't even consider who she'd be partnered with. 

”I swear if you lead us into a fox patch again....”

”Hey, the city’s smells have changed, I just need a bit more time to adjust to it.” He snapped back at her. “If you’d like to try and track through two meters of snow, feel free to step in.”

Ugh. She’d hoped that switching sides would make Marrow less annoying, but if anything it was the opposite. The veneer of military manners had, apparently, only been a cover for a deep well of grumpy, bitter sarcasm that he now felt free to unleash on the world.

Charitably speaking, all of them had gotten a touch more jaded and cynical since Atlas fell. It wasn't fair to pin it all on Marrow.

May wasn’t in a charitable mood. So she just scoffed and walked faster, forcing him to catch up. 

They climbed over hills of snow that were once cars and wove around the tops of lampposts and signs, until Marrow stopped to smell the wind once again, then froze. 

"Gods, there better be a second floor window we can break through because..." The words died in her mouth when she saw the look on his face. She knew that look.

All of the bounce went out of Marrow's walk as he trudged down a side street, with May dragging her heels behind him, resisting the urge to run the other way. They have to do this. They _have_ to.

They get about three blocks before May starts smelling it too. Just wisps, here and there. It's still too much, and she takes deep lungfuls of air, the cold spiking her lungs and beating back the nausea.

_There's no other choice. We have to do this. Think of all those little kids back at camp, and how happy they'll be when we bring them Dust._

Rather than smashing the second floor window, Marrow cuts around it with Fetch. Under any other circumstance, she'd snap at him for wasting time. Right now, she just ties her scarf around her nose and braces.

The window falls, and the smell billows out, almost visible. It goes past her nose, down her throat, crawling into her tongue, and she pulls down her scarf to be sick in the snow. Marrow holds her bangs back. _Focus, May. Focus_.

She wipes her mouth on her sleeve, then puts the scarf back in place. It mitigates it, ever so slightly. Marrow follows a moment after, tying his own, and she feels a whisper of sympathy for him. He has this worse than her.

They take Dust out of old stoves first, even cutting into the walls to check pipes for any left over. But eventually, they're sure they've got all the Dust they could find on this floor. This is... _was_....a bar. The majority of Dust reserves will be downstairs in the kitchen.

One foot in front of the other. Grip the rail for dear life. Fight back the nausea. Come around the bar. Look into the front.

The windows had broken under the weight of snow, burying a good part of the bar. But not all of it. Not enough to hide the evidence of what happened here.

The corpses scattered around might have been very different when alive, of all ages and species and appearances, but the rot had worn it all away. The rot, and the great wounds splitting them open, showing that Sabyrs had been responsible for their deaths. They'd huddled in here to try and protect themselves from the dying heat, and their panic had drawn the Grimm right to them. It was still chilly, but the burning stoves, and later insulation from the snow, had kept things just warm enough for the bodies to decay.

Marrow secures the back and she secures the bathrooms, She tries to ignore the dark bloodstains on the walls, the flimsy doors that had been torn off as the occupants ran for any semblance of safety, the child with a red trail leading to an adult who must have tried to protect them. If she doesn't, she'll collapse.

Sometimes there's Grimm at these pockets of death, these shattered sanctuaries. She wants there to be Grimm here, something she can kill, some way she can avenge this brutality. No such luck. 

They continue to the back, removing Fire Dust from the large stoves. The Grimm must have attacked early in the night, before they'd had time to burn everything, because there's a lot left over, more than they can carry. The survivors will rejoice when they bring this in the morning. Fire Dust has been getting thinner and thinner since the Blue Butcher, a warlord in the south of Mantle, had successfully retaken one of the grids they'd been using as a source.

This is good. They're doing good. This will save lives.

May quietly decides to plant a flag and send out a team later. She can't bear to be in this place a moment longer, with the rot still swirling in her gut and her soul. She starts to head out, but stops when she sees Marrow.

He's kneeling over a little boy, tail drooping, eyes downcast, shoulders hanging like he was collapsing under an enormous weight. She moves forward, thinking to pull him away, or maybe comfort him, but he shakes his head.

Marrow tries to close the eyes, but can’t. Rigor mortis has set in. So he tears bits of cloth from the jacket and wraps it around the boy's head, covering the eyes. Then he moves onto the next.

It's so small. It's minuscule. These people deserve cremations, burials, some form of ceremony. But there are too many, and so they've learned to ignore the bodies rather than confront the enormous task of dealing with them. There just isn't enough time or energy. This most basic gesture, in a single building of hundreds....it's nothing.

This....this is the best they can do. It's something they _can_ do.

May joins him.

They work silently. The rare times they need something from the other, it's entirely by gesture. They haven't said a word since they got into this place, and somehow, that's exactly as it should be. A scrap for a shroud. A stranger's silence for a funeral. It's nothing. But it is something, and right now, that little bit of ritual settles something deep in her soul.

Ironic, living in the kingdom of the dead where the dead can't afford their own funerals. 

They finish their task in silence, and climb back out of the second floor window. Marrow looks back as if to say something, then shakes his head. It's at that point she notices that he's got a bottle of something in his hand. He notices her looking, and shrugs.

"Figured we could bring some back, use it for fuel." 

"We could."

The wind changes and the smell comes again. She sighs and takes the bottle. 

”I hope you know how to hold your liquor.”

Marrow didn’t argue.

They hunkered down in another abandoned building, this one thankfully truly abandoned and with a table and two chairs within reach of a breakable window. Regrettably, neither of them were stupid enough to get truly drunk, or even tipsy, and the alcohol of choice (weak, pale lager) was to neither of their tastes. But it dulled the hurt, just a bit, and that was enough.

The silence was uncomfortable, neither of them drunk enough to break it. After the third pass of the bottle in between them, Marrow finally said something.

”You know, I struggled so hard to get away from this.”

May took another sip. “Mantle?”

”No. _This_.” He swung an arm wide, taking in the alcohol, the dilapidated room, and the hopelessness in one fell swoop. “Living in hell, where the only thing you can do is cope. I knew Atlas Academy would be difficult, but at least I felt like I was doing good.”

May had always wondered about that. “Why the Academy? You don’t seem like the military type.”

”I’m not. Took me too long to realize it, but I’m really not.” He sipped gently, clearly trying to save it for its intended purpose. “But this was back in the White Fang’s heyday. I thought if I joined, got high enough up, it would push back against what people thought of us.”

May considered that for a bit. "Can't have been easy though, going to school with that breathing down your neck." She expected something self-deprecating. She didn't expect that absolutely tired, worn look in his eyes. His entire posture faltered, and grief played across his face just for a moment. Not the grief of loss, but of isolation. She knew it well. 

"It was hell. I knew it was gonna be hell. It would have been much worse, but we Faunus stick together in Atlas, especially then. This one upperclasswoman, Jenny Grey, took a particular shine to me. She said that if any of us had a chance to climb that ladder, it was me. Partly due to the stereotype, I mean, a dog Faunus? But mostly because no matter what happened, I refused to give up. She believed I could burn a way to the top of this unfair world and leave a path others could follow. Wish I'd listened though, when she warned me that no matter how high I climbed, they would never let me forget it."

"They treated you badly, didn't they?" May asked, feeling a bit guilty for tossing him aside before. 

"Not in the way you're thinking. Not overtly. The sort that you can't quite tell if it's cause you're the rookie or cause you're the Faunus, and they probably don't know either." Marrow contemplated for a bit. "Except for Clover, but that's less cause he knew and more cause it wasn't his style. Jury's out on whether he was a good man, but he was undoubtedly a nice one."

The wind changed, sending the scent out of both of their faces for once. 

"You seem....." May wondered, trying to find a way to phrase this without it being an insult. Who'd have thought that she'd get to the point where she didn't want to insult Marrow Amin?

Marrow just raised an eyebrow.

".....too self-aware to be a dog of the military?"

"I wouldn't have phrased it that way." She defended, almost automatically.

"No, you wouldn't have." He admitted, then huffed a laugh. "Just a bit too used to that joke, I guess. Well, I did know better. I was reminded of that every day. I learned that Atlas was twisted, that most humans were content to just sit and watch while Faunus suffered, that this wasn't the way Huntsmen were supposed to be. And I thought if I just kept climbing, kept at it, one day I'd get high enough to change it, just a bit. When I got into the Ace Ops, I thought it was the end of the line, at least for me, but it was just more of the same. But I stayed, and stayed, because I figured that maybe if it wasn't fair for me, it would be a little more fair for the person behind me." 

"That's....surprisingly insightful." May said, then wondered. "You'd have made a good activist, you know."

Marrow smiled, just a bit sadly. "The White Fang fought, faded, and left us to pick up the pieces. No matter the cause, it burned out, and left things worse than before. The Atlas military, on the other hand, was permanent. A place where I could enact lasting change." He barked a laugh that was strong and bitter as root tea. "So much for that." He drank and handed the bottle back. "So, that's my sob story. What about yours?" 

"Mine?"

"Yeah. How does a Marigold wind up burning everything down for a cause in Mantle? Or doing anything worthwhile, while we're at it?"

A month ago she'd have snapped at him to mind his own business. Hell, a significant part of her wants to do just that. But the alcohol is burning her, and the world is hopeless, and right now she wants to think about better things, better times. 

Besides, while she wasn't good at speeches and rhetoric like Robyn was, May knew the value of a good story. Her own had swayed upper class Huntsmen into joining them, both before and after the fall. Marrow's had brought Faunus into the military, and now swayed remnants of the military to fight for them. Even Atlas could recognize the value of a story, if only in its weakest form, propaganda.

"I was sick of it long before I got to the Academy. Sick of all of the parties, the false kindness. Sick of the restrictions and the rules and every stupid fucking manner I ever had to learn. I wanted to rise in the ranks and become a specialist, bring honor to the Marigold name and tell every stuck-up bastard where he could shove it with no repercussions. I thought I was being a rebel, but really, I was just being a spoiled brat."

"Then I met Joanna, and she introduced me to Robyn and Fiona, and they were the first real friends I ever had. They opened my eyes to the injustices of the world. They let me be myself, in a way I'd never been before. They loved me, but they weren't afraid to call me on my bullshit, because they loved me enough to do that."

"So when Robyn asked me to follow her down back down to Mantle, to free the people there....I'll admit, I hesitated. I'd spent my entire life coddled, and I knew it. I knew things would be hard in ways I'd never experienced before, that we'd struggle and nothing would be certain. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to cut it."

"But......."

"But they were my friends. They were my people. I'd spent enough time reading about how things could be better. I could make things better. So I cut it all loose, the family, the military....everything, and I followed Robyn into Mantle. It was terrifying but at the same time....it was where I was meant to be."

Marrow considered that for a moment. "I guess we have something in common then. Just wish I'd gotten here sooner."

May didn't quite know what to say to that, and they sat in silence, comfortable this time with a weight off their chests.

Maybe it was just the beer googles (although she wasn't drunk enough for that, she knew she wasn't) but damn, Marrow was one _handsome_ man. It was somewhere in the jaw or the eyes or just the way he managed to be both beautiful and cute. Plus, he was clearly far more insightful and sensitive than she.... _no! Bad May! He's the enemy._..except he wasn't anymore.

Oh Gods, if the others ever hear about this, she will _never_ hear the end of it. Marrow fucking Amin, of all people. 

But....she'd seen how gently he'd wrapped the eyes of the dead. She could do worse.

She shook her head, dispelling that thought. _No more for me._

"Come on. We need to keep moving." May pulled Marrow off the chair, then corked the bottle. "I'm sure they'll be glad to hear we found fuel."

"You sure about that? Pretty sure Robyn'll kill us if she finds out we were drinking on duty."

May shrugged. "We're bringing back news of a bar full of alcohol. It's no Dust storehouse, but for fuel purposes? I'm sure she'll forgive us."

"Well, now I _really_ regret not joining your team sooner." 

May smiled, not yet willing to laugh at the joke. He'd have to earn that. They resumed the hunt, and May checked her watch. Two hours til dawn, plenty of time to find more caches of fuel, in whatever form they could find it. 

If they found anyone else, they'd wrap their eyes, and once she got back she'd pass around the idea to the others. In the face of overwhelming loss, people needed a tangible response, a way of letting go of what had once been so they could move forward. They needed to be able to say their farewells to the old world before they could adapt to the new one. The world had changed, and they must change as well.

She followed Marrow for about half an hour more, until his tail started wagging and he sprinted down the street like a ten year old getting his first Scroll. This would be a good find....or maybe another fox patch. 

Well, not _all_ of the changes had been bad.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is part of the same AU as No Silver Bullets, but Clover is dead in this one. Since this is basically Mad Max Flurry Road, I figured it should have the same approach to continuity as that series which is "continuity is less important than story". Whatever works, works.  
> Also I just realized I spent this whole oneshot imagining Marrow in the alternate Huntress outfit here: https://treasureplcnet.tumblr.com/post/190595287009/bold-of-you-to-assume-im-going-to-wait-around-for, so go find that tumblr and get fed. This ship ain't gonna sail itself.


End file.
